⭐️ Thanks, Microsoft: Super-high-res pictures make your Word document or PowerPoint presentation files so much larger. Save a ton of space with this trick: Lower the images’ resolution by compressing them. Word and PowerPoint will do it for you. Just search the program’s help using the phrase “compress pictures.” Lovely.
How to spot an AI-generated image: Tips, tricks and pro tools
Forget trying to spot if a pic of a model was photoshopped. (It was.) Now we can’t even trust if the person we see in a photo or video is real.
Fear not, I’m here to help you navigate the pixelated wilderness. Let’s look at the seven telltale signs an image is AI-generated.
7 signs that should make you say ‘Hmmm’
- Perfect symmetry: To the point that you could fold an image in half and it would be perfectly mirrored on both sides. Landscape photos and close-up shots are prime candidates. Real people aren’t perfectly symmetrical.
- Distortion: There’s usually a little wonkiness or distortion hiding in an AI image. Look at the faces in a crowd; you’ll likely find someone who looks like they went for a swim in an oil painting.
- Unusual proportions: Objects might seem too big or small, like cars as tall as homes or doorways too tiny for anyone to squeeze through.
- Shadows and light: Real-world photos play nice with the laws of physics, but AI? Not so much. Shadows tend to go in all directions.
- Unnatural textures: AI has a way of making textures appear suspiciously flawless (and we’re not talking about your skin with that Instagram filter). Images might appear too smooth, with no natural textures or color variations. On the flip side, it can have the opposite effect; hyper-realistic portraits with zoom-worthy wrinkles, pores and blemishes are also a thing.
- Watermarks: Most free AI image generators stick watermarks onto their creations. You’ll usually find them in the bottom left or right corners in the form of a logo or text pointing to the source site or app.
- Weirdness: Look for oddities like strangely shaped features, too many fingers or accessories that don’t match. It’s always the small things!
Tools you can use
If you’re still feeling iffy about an image’s origin, I’ll leave you with a few AI-detection tools that caught my eye. They’re also free. Score!
- AI or Not: Simply drag and drop, upload, or paste an image URL into the search bar, and AI or Not will tell you if it’s legit.
- Maybe’s AI Art Detector: Pretty much the same as AI or Not, but it will give you the AI verdict in percentages (e.g., “20% human and 80% artificial”).
Oh, and don’t forget about our old friend, Google’s reverse image search. If Google returns the same image from credible sources, chances are it’s real. But if it points you to an AI site, you might want to sound the alarms. Here’s how to check on iPhone and Android.
✅ I’ve got one more trick only the pros know: Inspect the metadata embedded in the image itself. I’ll walk you through it.
😂 In every koi pond of four or more, at least one koi is always fake. You’ve got koi A, koi B, koi C and then the D koi. (That was so bad, it was good!)
Don’t get left behind – Stay tech ahead
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"We have pics of your home"
Scammers are sending emails with Google Maps images of your house, claiming they’ve hacked your computer. Are they for real? Here’s the answer.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an insurance drone! Just ask Mike Arman, who was spied on twice by two different insurers. The first refused to renew his policy after satellite images showed his roof “looked deteriorated.” The second hit him with a 25% increase when it was time to renew. Your insurance company could start doing the same.
What does the acronym URL stand for? Is it … A.) Uniform Resource Locator, B.) Universal Retrieval Link, C.) Unified Reference Library or D.) User Request Log?
100% of the time
AI can beat online captcha tests designed to stump bots. A researcher trained a bot he called You Only Look Once (yeah, YOLO) on images of roads (paywall link). Now, the bot can ace the “Are you a human?” quizzes.
For you, Android pals: Files by Google is seriously underrated. It’s an easy way to view all your images, videos, apps and other files and clear out the junk quickly. Try this: Tap the three-dot menu > Clean. Here, you can delete duplicates, old screenshots, blurry pics and large files with just a click.
🌍 Coming soon to Google Earth: See the world as it looked 80 years ago with satellite and aerial images from major cities like London, Berlin and Paris dating back to the 1930s. It’s neat to see San Francisco’s ports in 1938, once bustling with shipping.
🖨️ HP is adding AI to printers: The Perfect Output feature cleans up webpages, automatically detecting and removing ads and weird formatting so you only print the text and images you want. It optimizes spreadsheets, too, keeping charts and tables on one page. OK, this is genius.
🌎 Sharper satellite images coming to Google Maps and Earth: The Cloud Score+ AI model removes clouds, haze and mist for a clearer, more vibrant view of the globe. Street View is getting an update, too, with better images across 80 countries. And Google Earth will soon show 80 years of historical aerial and satellite shots. Have a minute? Check out these cool Google Earth images.
🅿️ Thieves are slapping fake QR codes on parking meters: The stickers are placed over the originals to look legit but redirect you to sketchy links or phony websites. Pay directly at the meter or look for a kiosk. If scanning a code is the only way, use a credit card and scan the site for spelling errors, blurry images or strange logos.
A side hustle that won’t work: Pay a startup $30 a month and they’ll auto-post AI-generated vids to social media for you. Pick a topic (like motivation), and they’ll generate a script, voiceover, background track and AI images. The idea is to help you build an audience and start making money. Remember Shrimp Jesus (paywall link)?
🚨 Bogus captcha tests: Instead of picking images or typing words, these shady tests ask you to press Windows key + R and Ctrl + V. Doing so then pastes in a Windows PowerShell script that unleashes Lumma Stealer malware. Stay alert: These fake captchas are popping up on random websites and in phishing emails.
$700 PlayStation 5 Pro
Isn’t worth it for most gamers. It’s 75% more expensive than the PS5 was when it launched. What’s the big deal? A larger GPU, advanced ray tracing and AI-driven upscaling. Translation: Sharper images with more detail.
Android alert: Malware called SpyAgent is disguising itself within 280 banking apps and streaming services. This one is smart enough to recognize images and is stealing crypto wallet recovery phrases saved as screenshots. Stay safe: Only download apps from the official Google Play Store and never screenshot your passwords or seed phrases.
Let’s Turk about it: I mentioned Amazon Mechanical Turk on my show and I keep getting questions. Get paid to complete tasks that are easier for people than bots, like analyzing images and transcribing audio. Sign up here for a Worker account.
53% of businesses
Have been targeted by a financial deepfake scam. Even worse, 43% fell for it. These scams use bogus images, videos or audio recordings to convince people to buy gift cards, wire money or otherwise spend. If you get a random financial request at work, reach out to the person directly to confirm.
Telegram’s founder says he has “nothing to hide”: French authorities arrested him for criminal activities on the anonymous chat app — like people videoing themselves killing cats with kitchen utensils and pedophiles sharing explicit images of kids. The CEO says the app shouldn’t be held responsible for the horrible content, citing freedom of speech. Ahem, that’s not free speech, jerkface.
📄 Talk data to me: OpenAI paid users can upload a mountain of PDFs, data files and images. It will spit out a full analysis in moments — something that might take a human team months. It’ll even answer questions and generate charts, too.
🖼️ Just Imagen it: Google just released its Imagen 3 text-to-image generator via ImageFX. The AI tool whips up photorealistic images based on prompts you type in, and now it’s better with details. It can even get generated text right, so “Happy birthday, Kim” won’t come out looking like a garbled mess.